Production of terretonin N and butyrolactone I by thermophilic aspergillus terreus TM8 promoted apoptosis and cell death in human prostate and ovarian cancer cells

The anticancer activity of terretonin N (1) and butyrolactone I (2), obtained from the ther-mophilic fungus Aspergillus terreus TM8, was intensively studied against prostate adenocarcinoma (PC‐3) and ovary adenocarcinoma (SKOV3) human cell lines. According to this study, both compounds showed potent cytotoxicity towards ovarian adenocarcinoma cells (SKOV3) with IC50 1.2 and 0.6 μg/mL, respectively. With respect to metastatic prostate cells (PC‐3), the two compounds 1 and 2 showed a significantly promising cytotoxicity effect with IC50 of 7.4 and 4.5 μg/mL, respec-tively. The tested fungal metabolites showed higher rates of early and late apoptosis with little or no necrotic apoptotic pathway in all treated prostate adenocarcinoma (PC‐3) and ovary adenocar-cinoma (SKOV3) human cell lines, respectively. The results reported in this study confirmed the promising biological properties of terretonin N (1) and butyrolactone I (2) as anticancer agents via the induction of cellular apoptosis. However, further studies are needed to elucidate the molecular mechanism by which cellular apoptosis is induced in cancer cells.